Dear Beloved Community,
Every Sunday without fail, one or more of you will ask me, “do you think the parking lot will be done soon?!”
It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it!
After delays that have stretched throughout our excellent construction work from start to finish – city permitting issues last fall, prolonged snow and ice in the winter, slowdowns in structure manufacturing this spring, and a masonry coloration issue over the summer – the time is fast approaching for the conclusion of our work in the back! I hope you are watching the progress as eagerly as I am!
Gary Knight, Rick Matthews, and I met with our builders last week, and they are clear and confident that a pre-Thanksgiving dedication timing is just right for what remains onsite to complete. In some ways, that seems appropriate, doesn’t it? It’s the Sunday that hinges from ordinary time into Advent, the Sunday we will conclude our “Practicing our Faith” series from the fall with musings about building a “rule of life” out of these practices, and the Sunday that precedes the gratitude we’ll hear with feasts and families alike – why not celebrate once more? Our beloved community had already planned to gather that evening for our annual Thanksgiving Potluck Dinner and Bazaar, so we’ll do just that, but a bit earlier for a sunset blessing under the pavilion. Time together that night will unfold as we tour new spaces outside, enjoy a refreshed first floor, and share in fellowship and gratitude for all of God’s good gifts. More details to come, but mark your calendars now – you won’t want to miss it!
With a big church weekend ahead – our youth on fall retreat, Joining Sunday for newcomers and World Communion observed in worship, and a downtown-wide Longest Table gathering on Sunday night – the work of building and planting a community within the spirit of God continues not just onsite, but in our very lives. I suppose it’s poetic that this week, the Japanese maple tree salvaged from our pre-construction beds was finally planted in the soil. It has stayed alive all these months, tended patiently and steadily until it was ready to let its roots again run deep. She’s in the ground now, right as you enter the driveway and walkway, ready to meet the beloved community once more.
With that image and hope in my heart, I echo the words of Ephesians to you: “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with the power through God’s Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever!
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily